Against all odds
by thesecretrosegarden
Summary: All those years, they were together against all odds until one day, he just did not come home anymore
1. Epilogue

They always called her the lucky girl because she was lucky enough to never have hunger or cold feet in winter. Her bedroom was furnished, she had toys to play with, pink walls and many beautiful dresses in her closet. More than most of the other kids at school had, but she never really felt lucky in the first place. Her parents were rich, very fond of her but unfortunately barely ever at home. She spent her time being treated by a Nanny instead of her mother, seeing her only in the evenings and sometimes not even then. It was lonely growing up like that, even though she had company. It was just not the company she would have wanted. Of course no one understood her at school. The kids there had their own problems which weighed heavier on them than her family business. Most of the time she felt like she couldn't complain really anyway because she had everything she needed to survive. She knew a lot of kids who were starving at home because their parents couldn't afford buying food, who nearly died in the cold, rough winters they had in District 4, while she sat in front of a warming fire in the evenings. Yet life was not fair and the odds were not exactly in her favor. It was when her parents died that the kids at school finally found sympathy for the rich, strange classmate they usually avoided because they couldn't stand looking at her neatly washed pink dresses and polished black shoes. They didn't like the ribbons in her hair and the soft curls, reaching down to her waist that always seemed to be carefully brushed and never dirty. But when her parents died and she had to live with her uncle, a known drunkard in the district, infamous for beating his wife and young daughter, the kids at school started to look at her differently.

She was no longer the lucky girl.

If you have nothing to lose, it's easier to live but she had a lot to lose, at least luxuries the other children could only dream of.  
But it wasn't the loss of the beautiful pink room that made her sad, the loss of the dresses she now had to share with her cousin. It was the loss of her parents that really saddened her because she never really had the time to make them love her. There was so much unsaid and undone between them, so many happy memories not yet lived because they had never been there.

She could take the beating of her uncle. She could take the jealous looks of her cousin when she looked at all the possessions she had brought to her new home. The one thing she could not take was being alone at night, knowing she would from now on lead an ordinary life in her uncle's house, being unloved by everyone and not having anyone to turn to.

And that was when she met Finnick Odair.


	2. Ribbons

**One, where the pale sea foamed at the yellow sand,**  
**With wave upon slowly shattering wave,**  
**Turned to the city of towers as evening fell;**  
**And slowly walked by the darkening road toward it;**  
**And saw how the towers darkened against the sky;**  
**And across the distance heard the toll of a bell.**

The wind was sharp and played violently with her already wild curls. She had not been able to brush them in the morning because her uncle had used her brush as firewood, insisting that she did not need something like this in his household. One of his favourite things was to made sure she knew she was ugly. He called her too thin, dull faced, weird eyed and with hair that needed to be cut short because it cost him too much water to clean it. Annie usually just kept quiet when he was furiously scolding her for no reason. She knew it made no sense to argue with a drunken idiot who could not pee without wetting the floor. Four months now she lived in his house and she had learned more about life than she had wanted to. Before her parent's death, she had been kept save, far away from everything that could hurt her. In fact, she had been spoiled but she had never really noticed that because she lacked the most important thing in life: love.

Now that she lived in an even crueler environment, she lacked it even more because there was nothing left to warm her heart even a little. She had no friends at school, only some girls who admired her dresses more than herself, her younger cousin who was too afraid to really like her because she knew her father hated the new family member and despite that, there was no one she could think of. In fact, the boys at school bullied her around because she was a snob in their eyes. That had never been her own fault, she had just been born like it, but no one saw that.

Sometimes, when her uncle was extremely awful, she would come to the beach, sit down in the sand and just stare at the waves.

This evening, the waves crashed against the beach angrily. It was stormy, fall was near and the last rays of the September sun could not reach through the dark, heavy clouds above that promised rain. It had rained all day long, only stopped after dinner and gave her the opportunity to escape for a little while. Back in the old days she wouldn't have bothered to get soaked, but her uncle had no warm fire to welcome her when she came home because he spent his money on buying booze instead of wood to light the fire.

For a moment she closed her eyes and inhaled the salty air. It filled her lungs and left her lips tasting like ocean. A noise behind her startled her and she turned around to see a boy with a fishing net. His skin was sunburned, his lips cracked, his blue eyes sparkling with life and in the color of the ocean. He looked at her, confused, then made his way over to the place where she sat.

"Hi", he said, looking down at her.

"Hi", she replied, not sure what to say. She knew him very well, he was one of the most famous boys at school and every girl her age was madly in love with him. Except her, because she had no time for such things.

"I've never seen you at the beach before", he stated, looking her up and down as if he wanted to make sure she wasn't hurt or anything.

"Do you even know me?", she asked, not sure why someone like him should have noticed her. But then again, she was well known by everyone because they hated her. Even though he was older, it was no surprise he was familiar with her.

"Yes. You are Annie Cresta, the girl with the ribbons in her hair. I liked them."

A huge smile appeared on his face and without a warning he took her hand and made her rise up from the sand.

"Here, Annie Cresta. I'm about to go fishing so we have some dinner tonight. I could really use some help. Will you help me?"

Annie felt uncomfortable in the situation because she was not used to being treated like this by a stranger. Kids stopped being nice to her somewhen in first grade so she usually expected to be called names or kicked when she met someone from school. His smile, though, seemed genuine and beautiful and warmed her up on the inside like nothing else before.

"I have never been fishing", she admitted and looked at the net, not sure what to do with it.

"Really? Your father made this net in his company. And you have never been fishing yourself? What a dull childhood you must have had! Fishing can be a lot of fun. I'll teach you how to do it, alright? The other boys can just never stand still in the water, which is the most important rule when you want to catch fish. I think you can be very quiet, because I saw you sitting just staring at waves for about an hour now before I came along."

Again he smiled and this time, Annie smiled too.

"Alright, I guess I'll help you"

Finnick approached the water and went into it, as if it was warm and the weather hot. When Annie stepped into the cold, grey water, she realized one tiny little thing that made it fairly impossible to follow him.  
"Finnick?"

"Yes?"

"I can't swim!"

The words sounded so odd coming from someone who had grown up in District 4 but it was true. No one had ever bothered to teach Annie how to swim and therefore she had always kept her distance from the ocean. She had wanted to learn it, but her parents never saw the necessity in it.

Finnick turned around and frowned.

"You...can't swim?"

She shook her head.

"Were you adopted from the Capitol or something?"

The question somehow made her laugh.

"No, but no one ever taught me. My parents were never around..."

Finnick just shrugged and grinned.

"It's about time that Finnick Odair teaches you a few lessons, huh? Come here tomorrow, bring something you can swim in and I'll teach you how to do it. That's probably better before I teach you how to fish. The sea gets rougher in the fall and you could slip and drown. Of course I would save you, though."

Annie laughed and shook her head.

"You are really fond of yourself, Finnick Odair. But I'll be here, tomorrow evening, with clothes to swim in. And I will think of something to teach you as well", she said and smiled softly.  
"Alright, I fish by my own then. See you tomorrow, Annie!"

Finnick waved at her and waded deeper into the water, where he spread the net and stood still to catch fish. Annie watched him for a few moments, before she turned away and ran home.

Before she went to bed that night, she took a small box out from under the bed and looked inside. All her ribbons were folded in it, neatly put aside since after her parent's death. Tomorrow, she would wear one and maybe Finnick Odair would notice it.


End file.
